For What Am I Grateful in 2021?
Don't worry - I plan on keeping this game-centered. But I would be remiss if I didn't say the following:
- I'm grateful for my incredible family and friends who love me, and through that love, teach me humility, gratitude, patience, and so many other qualities I admire in others. I'm grateful that they give me the opportunity to grow those traits in myself.
- I often say that I'd rather be lucky than good while playing games, but honestly, that goes for life too. I'm grateful for the fact that, in life, I'm so frequently lucky, even when I'm not good.
- I'm grateful for the multitudinous opportunities I have had to serve my community. One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from J. Michael Straczynski's run on The Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man decides he can no longer fight, and it's Doctor Strange who says: "Do you know what is the greatest gift anyone can receive in his lifetime? The greatest gift we can receive is to have the chance, just once in our lives, to make a difference. Do you understand how many times you made a difference? Enough for a hundred lifetimes." I'm no Spider-Man. But I've had countless opportunities to serve my community, my friends, my family, and make a difference in doing so. The older I get, the more I recognize the truth in this quote, and the more grateful I am for the gifts I have been fortunate enough to receive in my lifetime so far.
Okay! Games! For what am I grateful? Imma keep it to game stuff for which I'm grateful in 2021. I think it could be interesting to see how my list does or does not change over the course of years, but we'll see whether or not it's a notion worth continuing year to year.
- Honestly, the game for which I'm most grateful in 2021 is probably Everdell. The game plays extremely well solo, which was a really big deal during this pandemic. And with the number of expansions and new elements, I never really got tired of playing it, even by myself. Additionally, the theme is light and fun, and the art is the same. As a result, even if I had been a little down when I started playing the game, I always felt better by the time I was done.
- Star Wars Armada was a close second in 2021. I didn't play it in person nearly as much as I had been pre-pandemic, but as the year went on and numbers were going down, I was able to get in a number of local tournaments and open plays, and that was great fun. It felt like the start of a return to normal, for which I was grateful. Armada also helped me reconnect strongly with a college friend as we talked about the game nearly daily and started playing on Tabletop Simulator. I'm still not a big fan of playing Armada on TTS, but I have been enjoying it for what it is: namely, we play the game, yes. But mostly, I'm connecting with good friends.
- I didn't play much Spirit Island at all this year because I learned that it's not a game I enjoy playing solo. I don't like playing a game with only one spirit, and controlling multiple spirits is a little bit too much head-spin for me. However, I did play it several times via Zoom, with my board mirroring that of some dear family, and it worked far better than I anticipated! I was grateful for playing a game I love with people I love in a time when that was much more difficult than usual.
- Boardgame Geek Bit Bowls. Seriously. You may think I'm kidding, but these things are AWESOME. They're not strictly necessary for every game, but they are fantastic for games like Spirit Island that use A TON of tokens and bits. They help keep it all organized and ultimately save you table space and confusion. Because they fold and unfold, they're also easy to store and to carry. They'll likely be a perpetual presence on this list from year to year...
- I'm grateful for the various "Cons" I attended this year!
- CabinCon 2021 was a ridiculous amount of fun. Board games in a cabin in the woods with excellent people is a win, especially during a year like 2021. You can read my 8-part recap here if you are so inclined! Got to play a bunch of new games, too, which I love.
- Geekway to the West was also a blast this year! Every game I played was new to me, I won one of the ones I really enjoyed, and I got to support a local gaming con. I wrote a little two part recap that you can read here.
- I started writing about this last week and still owe y'all a second part, but I'm also grateful for the RPing weekend I got to enjoy with some of my closest friends who were also, incidentally, the first gaming group I played with upon moving to St. Louis 9 years ago. It didn't go the way we planned, but we ended up having a really great time and, as always when we RP, sharing a lot of laughs. Given that I've written previously about how much I miss role-playing regularly, the weekend meant that much more to me.
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